To integrate or not? - HR Systems: Technology Solutions - implementing a middleware system in core human resources management systems

HR Magazine, Oct, 1999 by Colin Currie

Middleware offers an alternative to integrating self-service with your HR system.

A videocassette recorder integrated with a television sounds like a great idea. They're already connected. When you have one, you have the other. You know they're compatible. The whole world should buy integrated TV/VCR sets.

Or should they?

What happens if one part breaks? What if the VCR or the TV becomes obsolete? What if you want to upgrade the TV? What if you want to use the VCR with another TV? Maybe it's not such a great idea after all. Perhaps for some people, mixing and matching modular units is a better decision.

The same can be said for integrating your self-service and your human resources software. It sounds like a great way to go, but it's not necessarily the best solution for everyone.

This is not to say that employers shouldn't consider pursuing self-service solutions. After all, implementing systems that let employees personally see and act on relevant HR data is becoming increasingly common - and for good reason. Self-service software allows employees and managers to take on much of the data reference and entry activities that traditionally fell on HR administrators.

Further, integrated self-service software has become increasingly useful and powerful over the last couple of years. And within the next few years, using self-service for many of HR's functions will be universally acceptable within mainstream U.S. business. Any HR application of strategic value to a mid- to large-size organization will, in the coming years, provide a means to extend self-service functionality to employees and managers.

So what's the problem? The emerging issue for HR professionals is that developers of HR applications are now beginning to integrate self-service functionality with their core systems. Certainly, the top five providers of HR software consider self-service functionality to be an important part of what makes their software useful and competitive.

And this trend toward integration raises some questions HR professionals would be wise to address. Chief among them is the decision to integrate self-service with the HR system or to use an alternative solution known as middleware.

The Down Side of Integrated Self-Service

The problems with integrating self-service functionality with core HR systems begin with the fact that you are limited initially to what the software vendor has already built into the system. Often, what is available is limited at best. It is then up to you, the system owner, to modify and build upon this delivered functionality to create a truly useful system for the target users: employees and managers.

For the most part, the tools available in the core applications to build new functionality are not well suited to creating the kinds of attractive, intuitive screens that self-service applications require. Remember, your users will not be experts in your HR system's environment. They need a system that is straightforward and easy to use. The tools integrated with core systems generally are geared toward creating custom functions for specially trained users of those systems, not for software novices.

The second major drawback of integrating self-service within core HR systems is that the data available within the systems begin and end with the data stored in that particular system. In other words, if you have simply implemented a particular vendor's HR module, that will be the extent of your self-service system. These types of systems cannot interact with other external host systems to include, for example, payroll or financial data without major modifications or interfaces.

This is not a big problem for organizations that have implemented entire enterprise resource planning (ERP) suites. But this simply is not the case for the vast majority of organizations. Despite all the hype about ERP systems, most organizations still depend on department-specific or best-of-breed applications for their data-processing requirements.

A final drawback to integrated self-service is that - like the purchaser of the integrated VCR and TV who wants to upgrade to high-definition TV - upgrading the self-service portion of the application to include something like interactive voice response will require upgrading the entire system.

The only alternative is to do something that might have made sense in the first place - implement a system specifically designed to collect data from and share data with a disparate set of users. In other words, implement a piece of middleware.

The Benefits of Middleware

Middleware is a layer of technology that is capable of simultaneously speaking to multiple host systems residing on nearly any type of system platform. It is similar to placing a translator into your system's architecture that can facilitate and automate communications between systems. The best middleware packages can speak to virtually anything from mainframes and minis to PCs and client/server applications. Middleware's ability to speak to all these different kinds of host systems can greatly facilitate the communication of data among virtually any set of systems.